Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Josquius]

Yes. This is where the key to being working class comes.
Stepping foot in university doesn't instantly render someone who grew up in abject poverty as Middle class.
This kind of thinking means working class people can never be succesful. Just as Deform like it.

And yep. Definitely true they're selective about it and the ultimate establishment figure of farage is somehow anti establishment. In a similar gosh they are such hypocrites vein read this one today...

Private Eye reports over 50 peers have signed a "furious missive to the National Portrait Gallery," angry about its decision to exhibit 'Persistence'. The film is critical of Cromwell's mass killings in Ireland.

Tory peer Toby Young signed it. Yep, founder/director of the Free Speech Union...

[Razgovory]

Really disagree on this.  "Working class" isn't a set of beliefs.  It's where you are economically.  A billionaire isn't working class because he grew up poor or holds the correct political beliefs.  Working class can become "successful" by gaining lots of money or becoming well educated.  They just graduate to another class.

Furthermore, this viewpoint may be one of the reason why the working class has been so bad off for the last 40 years in both America and Britain.  The emphasis has been not improving the lives of the working class, but elevating talented and lucky individuals out of it.  Plucking some people out of poverty and putting them in the ranks of the elite doesn't help the majority of people who make minimum wage.  All the people I work with and interact with on daily basis live in poverty (except the store manager).  If I became a computer programmer or a lawyer, their situation would not improve one bit.

This might explain why the working class and left have become estranged in America.

[HVC]

British Environmentalists are weird

This is satire, right?

[Sheilbh]

Oh certainly. It is just funny when going "he's not like us" when they are all much more similar than the average UK citizen.

I, for one, would like an answer as to why he was chill about his now wife, then girlfriend, going on a date with someone on Blind Date. Would you let someone you love get that close to Cilla Black?

Cilla Black: history's greatest monster (at least if you believe the gossip in Liverpool and from airline staff )

The "privately educated, posh, white" segment of our society have been fucking useless for many years now, with an impressive list of failures and missteps. Hence the support for Reform; though why Reform supporters have not noticed that Farage is just another member of that over-privileged and over-represented bunch of numpties is beyond me.

I agree I think part of it is just genuinely as basic as not sneering/being a snob or patronising to people. It's why the Emily Thornberry photo of the house with England fans "Rochester" cut through so much - because everyone knew exactly what was meant. It's also why the responsse ("I feel respect when I see a white van" ) landed so flat. It's why I like John Harris and Lewis Goodall and also Aaron Bastani on Novara so much for their visits to other bits of the country and interviewing people is they're not sneering or patronising, and they're interested in people. The might push back - but I don't think people mind that so much if it's not laced with a "God these ghastly people" tone. And as you say I think that goes for both Muslim areas that are voting Gaza Independents or Green or Reform areas.

I remember going to a local Labour Party thing not long after the referendum - so it was very fraught within Labour, there was the leadership challenge against Corbyn etc. I was in an inner borough part of London that was an incredibly safe Labour seat (Harriet Harman's old seat) and so it was filled to the gills with very ambitious young people, very much on the Labour right who worked for NGOs or lobbyists basically to do their activism before they found a safe seat. (Also several council cabinet members who were very, very close to property developers doing projects in the borough - who after they left the council found lucrative jobs with those developers ) I remember being astonished at the level of contempt for the people in general - partly it was around Brexit voters, but also others too. I suggested maybe as a local party we could try and do outreach/a campaign on Khan's "London is open" stuff of making clear we were there for Europeans, immigrants, people who might feel alienated - which may be a shit idea but was just met with derision, because "those people" don't or can't vote.

I was sat next to someone who I got on with very well - I didn't know his background and it turned out he was a very long-standing hard-left activist (associated with Bernie Grant and Diane Abbott and the Black Section campaigns in the 80s - he was later kicked out of the party over anti-semitism) which accidentally made me a pariah. But I remember just chatting with him and just not understanding how you can be on the left or what the point of the left is if it doesn't start from a basic premise of liking and trusting and believing in people (and the people).

Yes. This is where the key to being working class comes.
Stepping foot in university doesn't instantly render someone who grew up in abject poverty as Middle class.
This kind of thinking means working class people can never be succesful. Just as Deform like it.

Yeah I don't really agree. This is the line Keir Starmer used to make (thank God Shabana Mahmood always gently pushed back on it so it was only used in private) that his was the most working class cabinet ever. Which is fucking mental

I think it was basically grounded on the fact that they all went to state schools and some of them had working class family backgrounds. By that metric until Starmer the most working class cabinet ever was Theresa May's To an extent I would argue the opposite - it is the least working class cabinet a Labour government has ever had (basically only Angela Rayner as far as I'm aware). Many are stories of social mobility (including Starmer himself), from a working class background who went to a state school - and then, crucially, went to universities (mainly Oxbridge) and became professionals. I think it slightly perverts their sense of class politics and the politics of respect as I worry what they mean by that is that people don't show sufficient deference to Sir Keir Starmer, knight of the realm who did a BCL at Oxford and is a King's Counsel.

But if you compare that with previous Labour government who had people who had literally been ship's stewards, worked as deckhands in the merchant navy, been dockhands, worked in the mines or factories or on the transport network as hauliers and longshoremen. I think the nature of working class jobs has changed over time, but these are people who often absolutely have experienced social mobility excelling at school, going to elite universities and then (broadly speaking) working in politics and the NGO sector - they are not people (with the exception of Angela Rayner) who worked in care homes, or on the shop floor, or in a call centre, or in precarious gig work like Deliveroo.

They are not and Andy Burnham isn't working class - but may have a working class background. I think the snobbishness to him and Badenoch is more just an indicator of how distinctive a class background our media has. You may be one of them in some ways but not really in others.

Private Eye reports over 50 peers have signed a "furious missive to the National Portrait Gallery," angry about its decision to exhibit 'Persistence'. The film is critical of Cromwell's mass killings in Ireland.

Tory peer Toby Young signed it. Yep, founder/director of the Free Speech Union...

It's been withdrawn and the complaint in the letter (led by historians) wasn't around Cromwell. It was that their were lines in it around Churchill and the Bengal famine that it was an intentional famine like Cromwell in Ireland - which is just not true. It wasn't an intentional famine.

I think there's a really strong argument that it is a famine produced by the conditions of imperialism (plus a war which hugely disrupted transport infrastructure in the region, plus a cyclone) in the same way as the Great Famine in Ireland was produced by 19th century laissez-faire liberalism (and the Holodomor was produced by Stalinism). In each case I think they are logical if not necessarily inevitable outcomes (other factors need to be in play/interact with those conditions to produce famine), but they weren't intentional.

[Sheilbh]

British Environmentalists are weird

This is satire, right?

Think the link's broke

[HVC]

British Environmentalists are weird

This is satire, right?

Think the link's broke

Fixed 

[Richard Hakluyt]

I'm also a fan of John Harris. He always talks to all sorts of people so they are real to him, which I don't think they are to many Labour types. That Thornberry post was a disgrace, why on earth is she in a social democratic party when she despises the working class that much.

Which raises the question of how come Starmer is so out of touch. I mean by all accounts his support for Arsenal is genuine; was he simply too prissy to hang out with some of the working-class supporters, maybe have a beer with them after the match?

[garbon]

This/I guess I inspired myself () to introduce my family to Cilla Black via this clip.

I guess it is about a modicum of privacy but I just love how when they are having their tearful reunion, she pulls camera so she can sing.

[Sheilbh]

So as I say according to the gossip in Liverpool she was an absolute nightmare. A total diva who wouldn't ever talk to common people - famously she'd only speak to air stewardesses through her husband/manager. My dad knew her as a kid because they both grew up on Scotland Road (back before her stage name when she was just Cilla White ) and he hated her for those reasons, but also she backed Thatcher which he couldn't comprehend for someone from Scotty Road (but that was a trend for a certain type of scouse celebrity). But she is also a bit of an icon so has a statue in town (depicting her managed by Epstein-Merseysound days, not her terror of the skies days).

I always love the clip at the end of Blind Date when she'd found out it was getting cancelled so announced she was quitting on live TV causing a producer to come on and explain while she heckled off camera:

Also the "she's a journalist, ladies and gentlemen!" moment (she'd have made a fantastic witchfinder):

Edit: Needless to say a gift to Liverpool's drag scene

[Richard Hakluyt]

I suppose it takes a certain amount of moral courage to be a scouser and support Thatcher....not talking with ordinary folk though, very Hyacinth Bucket 

[Valmy]

Cilla Black? Well damn. She sure milked her very moderate amount of fame.

[Sheilbh]

I suppose it takes a certain amount of moral courage to be a scouser and support Thatcher....not talking with ordinary folk though, very Hyacinth Bucket 

Very - from Popbitch many years ago on one of the stories about her flying

Cilla, The Frequent Flyer

Known – and feared – throughout the cabin crew community, Cilla Black's in-flight attitude is the stuff of legend.

Not only would she insist upon travelling first class, she'd demand seat 1A. That was only the first of many demands too – all of which were made through her PA, as Cilla didn't want to speak to any staff herself. The full nine yards too, not so much as a please or thank you.

One flight attendant eventually grew so tired of her behaviour, that he leaned over to speak directly to her and uttered the immortal line: "I knew you couldn't sing, but I didn't know you couldn't fucking speak".

I think it was true of Jimmy Tarbuck and Thatcher too - there were a few of that generation where there was very much a "I've got mine/moved up in the world" attitude and once you've got a bit of money and a nice house, you go Tory.

[Valmy]

One flight attendant eventually grew so tired of her behaviour, that he leaned over to speak directly to her and uttered the immortal line: "I knew you couldn't sing, but I didn't know you couldn't fucking speak".

Damn.

[Sheilbh]

This may be why Brits find American customer service overwhelmingly friendly

[Richard Hakluyt]

So a singer who couldn't sing and a comedian who wasn't funny 

For the benefit of non-Brits Cilla, or Killer as my Dad always called her, had a very woman of the people schtick going when she was on stage or her tv shows.